TONITE’S BEST BET: The Mad Monk, Shelf-life Returned Агония/Agony (Drama. USSR, 1981)(Doverie, 16:25 & 00:25) --> People started making Rasputin movies almost before the body was stiff – a 1917 German b/w silent by one H. Arno was apparently the 1st – and today IMDb lists no fewer than 186 entries under the name/title. So while there’s a Rasputin for everybody, obviously, this E. Klimov version (script by S. Lungin & I. Nusinov) of the mesmerizing monk’s exotic/gruesome/tragic and almost too-familiar story is noteworthy for several reasons, starting w/ its telling history: shooting began in 1966 (based on A. N. Tolstoy’s Заговор императрицы) but Mosfilm canned the original dir. and took on Klimov, who in turn canned the ANT-based script (as “cardboard”) and got SL and IN to do one, which was pitched to Mosfilm as a farce featuring both the “actual Rasputin” and a “legendary” version. Mosfilm turned this down and closed the project, but a rewrite (now titled ‘Agony’) convinced them to start shooting again in ’67 and…oh forget it, this is why God created dissertation writers. The short version: the film was finally considered done by ’74 but relegated to the infamous “shelf” – the waiting room/purgatory reserved for finished productions deemed by one committee or another too risky (ideologically, morally, whatever) to show the Soviet public. It was released for foreign consumption only in ’81, winning prizes in Italy and France, but made it onto Soviet screens only w/ the dawn of perestroika (’85). Tune it in, by all means (or watch online at the link below): A. Petrenko makes an outstanding Rasputin, and is ably abetted across the board by a cast, crew, score and production values that are right up there w/ the best Mosfilm efforts of the era. Koroche, this is a memorable film – some of its images may be too memorable, in fact – and a long way from both the Tolstoy version and the once-envisioned farce. As one critic aptly noted a few years ago, you can look at the production several ways now -- “как творение большого мастера, но и как слепок сознания 70-х” – but hey, it’s still up to you to figure out just why the Russian public had to have this ‘Agony’ kept out of reach for almost a generation.
Posted on: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 03:34:10 +0000
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